#nyc trees

Weeping Beech Flushing Queens

In 1998, New York City had a funeral for a 151-year-old tree, the first American weeping beech. Located in Flushing, Queens, it was to be cut down the following year after growing to 60 feet tall and with an umbrella of branches that stretched 85 feet. Despite moves to save it with support cables and "fertilizer injections," it had finally died. According to the New York Daily News, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern said: "This is the vegetable equivalent of an Egyptian pharaoh going into his sarcophagus surrounded by his adoring little offshoots.”

It was an incredible tree, and was named the city’s first living landmark in 1966 by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. (The second living landmark was the still-surviving Southern magnolia in Bed-Stuy, also a Great Tree I've visited.) Even more significant, it’s believed every weeping beech in the United States descends from it. If you go to the tree’s former home today, you’ll find Weeping Beech Park, where its offspring stand in a ring around the grassy void where the old tree presided. These are just a few of the innumerable weeping beech trees it spawned around the country. 

Horticulturist Samuel Parsons brought the weeping beech sapling from Belgium in a flower pot, planting it in Queens in 1847. Parsons also grew the nearby Great Tree, the cedar of Lebanon (which I previously visited), at his Queens nursery, where he fostered all sorts of rare botanicals. 

Cedar of Lebanon Weeping Beech Park Queens

The silhouette of the cedar of Lebanon with its umbrella of branches that stretch longer than it is tall is famous through the national flag of Lebanon. One particularly lovely example is in Weeping Beech Park in Flushing, Queens, and is, according to NYC Parks, one of several old trees that survive from the 19th-century nursery of Samuel B. Parsons.

Parsons helped diversify the trees of New York City and the rest of the United States through his imports, although the cedar of Lebanon is believed to have first arrived in the country in the 18th century, shipped to the Prince Nurseries in Flushing from France or England. Who knew Queens was such a horticultural hub? (Well, likely a lot of people aside from me, I’m still learning.) 

An even older cedar of Lebanon was once the pride of Flushing, and was unfortunately struck down by lightning sometime into its second century in 1934. Perhaps if that tree had lived, it would be on the Great Tree list instead of this one.

Japanese Red Pine Wave Hill The Bronx

Rounding out the grove of Great Trees at Wave Hill (including the American elm, lacebark pine, and sugar maple) is this Japanese red pine. NYC Parks states that this is actually a replacement of a Japanese red pine that previously stood in this spot, and is only 11.48 feet tall. According to Edward Sibley Barnard's New York City Trees field guide, the previous conifer was around 30 feet in height. So this replacement is not quite as formidable, and likely wouldn’t be picked by any Wave Hill visitors if they were asked to guess at its “Great” trees. Nevertheless, its willowy trunks topped by bursts of pine needles are worth a pause. 

As it names suggests, it's from Asia, and is popular in Japanese gardens (and as a bonsai) for its sculptural form. I haven’t read anywhere what happened to the first Wave Hill tree, which must have stood out so much from its fellow specimens as to merit listing, yet I love that people cared enough to bring in an understudy. 

American Elm Wave Hill The Bronx

Located just down the trail from Wave Hill’s sugar maple and lacebark pine is an incredible American elm that stands over 114 feet. NYC Parks compliments the grove of official Great Trees as being "one of the most pleasant picnic spots in the city" (don't get excited, Wave Hill does not allow picnicking on the grass).

Wave Hill has a bit more history in their own "great trees" self-guided tour, which features the elm on the cover, noting that it's among New York City's largest American elms, and may have made it through the midcentury destruction of Dutch elm disease due to its "inherent resistance." It does appear like a hardy specimen, stretching proudly toward the sky, with branches flowering from its multiple trunks that emerge near the top. The leaves weren’t quite full when I visited in April, just tiny returning buds after winter, but like all elms, the skeletal structure of it is stunning even without the green. 

Lacebark Pine Wave Hill The Bronx

With a beautiful name like lacebark pine, you except an elegant tree, and this specimen at Wave Hill in the Bronx is quite lovely, although you have to seek it out amidst a whole grove of showy arbors. The conifer is in the same grouping of official NYC Great Trees as the sugar maple I previously shared, and according to NYC Parks is a bit shorter than that tree at 52.48 feet tall. 

So why the lacebark name? If you go below its evergreen canopy, there are slender trunks covered in a patchwork of green, grey, white, and brown formed from the flaking of its bark. The tree is originally from central China, and has long been popular as an ornamental, often cultivated around Buddhist temples.

Sugar Maple Wave Hill The Bronx

It’s spring! And with the return of warm weather and leaves on the trees, I’m back to visiting the arboreal wonders of New York City. My first stop for the season was Wave Hill in the Bronx, where there are four official Great Trees, and they happen to be just feet apart.

I’m going to start with the sugar maple, which presides over a lovely bench overlooking a green sloping lawn. NYC Parks doesn't have many details on why the four trees, out of the many gorgeous specimens at the Wave Hill gardens, were chosen for the list. For the sugar maple, they just note that it's "the only sugar maple in New York City to be designated a Great Tree,” which I suppose is something. They measure it at an impressive 88.56 feet, with a canopy spread of 56 feet. Wave Hill estimates that this sugar maple could be over 150 years old, dating to before the area was an estate.

American Beeches Maple Grove Cemetery Queens

The small grave of Elisabeth Riis, wife of journalist, reformer, and photographer Jacob Riis, has worn down since her death in 1905, including the lamb asleep on top. However, the two trees Riis planted at the site stand tall, their canopy of leaves gracefully winding above Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens. 

According to NYC Parks, the twin American beeches are both over 60 feet tall. On my early November visit, their dark green leaves were tinged with autumnal yellow, but still had yet to fall. A rosary was hanging on one trunk. Maple Grove Cemetery was opened in 1875 and once had its own train station; it’s much quieter now. It still has an air of Victorian mourning with its winding paths and contemplative angels, although not nearly as ostentatious as Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx or Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Jacob Riis lived to 1914, eventually leaving his Richmond Hill, Queens, home, where they lived on Beech Street (there’s some reports the cemetery trees were from their front yard), and relocating to Massachusetts where he’s buried. Over a century later, somewhere below the earth I imagine the beech roots tangled through the tombs, where somewhere Elisabeth was buried in her wedding dress next to two of her young children. 

Maple Grove Cemetery shares this 1906 diary entry by Riis on the planting of the trees: